Twitch begins shift from Flash to HTML5

Game streaming service Twitch, now an official Amazon property, has followed in YouTube's footsteps and begun the process of migrating away from Adobe's once-ubiquitous Flash Player.

While once the king of rich-media content, Adobe's Flash has been decreasing in popularity of late thanks to a combination of improved in-browser media support and a string of serious security issues over the years culminating in three zero-day vulnerabilities becoming public knowledge following a breach on grey-hat security firm Hacking Team. Now, Twitch - purchased by Amazon for $970 million in August last year - has taken a leaf from web video giant YouTube and begun the process of shifting away from Flash to the newer HTML5 standard.

While it's progress, the process is only half-complete. 'Today’s redesign moves half of the video player – specifically the controls – from Flash to HTML5 and JavaScript,' explained Twitch's Georgia Price in a blog post detailing the update. 'The video itself is still in Flash underneath the controls. However, this is an important step to releasing the much-anticipated full HTML5 player.'

The new player will appear on channel pages initially, and will be gradually rolled out across the site 'at a steady pace,' Price explained. No date has been yet given for the migration to a pure-HTML5 video playback system.